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To clarify, HootSuite didn’t pay me to write this post. I am recommending their service simply be’cuz I’m a happy user. I’d like thank my fellow co-worker Sarah Gay @sarahgay for introducing the tool to me. This note is written for all the social media community managers who are deep in the trench managing multiple social network profiles for their company.

Without further do, here are the 10 WHYs:

1. Multiple social network profiles, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn All-In-One
I coach and work with many brand social media managers, one of the questions I receive frequently is “how do you jiggle multiple social network profiles at once?” With HootSuite, you no longer need to waste time “sign in, sign out.” One account login will give you access to viewing multiple Twitter feeds, the Facebook news feed, your Fan Page wall and your LinkedIn Network Updates without ever leaving the application. AND, you can update all of them at once if you’d like, just make sure you select the correct profile(s) before you hit the “send” button!

2. Multiple editors, different levels of control
Want to invite a few others to tweet with you but keep the Twitter password to yourself? If you are the ultimate keeper of your brand social media properties, you can simply add “editors” on HootSuite while maintaining control of the profiles. Basically, there are two types of users on HootSuite – level 1 “admin” is the account owner who can add/remove social network profiles and invite other users to participate on selected ones; level 2 “editor” is capable of tweeting & viewing but has no visibility to the social network credentials. I find this feature very useful for organizations that feature occasional guest Twitters or event reporters. After they are done chiming in, “admins“ can easily remove the “editor” access.

3. Schedule tweets for later
This feature is essential for Twitter time management. Unless your full-time job is to tweet, I’d suggest you create a content calendar and compose Tweets ahead of time based on promotional campaigns, upcoming deals, store circular, etc. Depends on your objective of the Twitter account, your tweeting frequency and response time may vary. However, “schedule tweets for later” allows you to put more thoughts into the broadcasting messages before they go out. As a results, you can spend the day-to-day focusing on real-time RTs and @reply. Once you schedule your tweet, it will appear in the “Pending” column for that Twitter profile. And yes, all the scheduled tweets you and your teammates created will appear under the same column. Be sure you’ve got your time zone set correctly! Check the Settings page if you need to double-check it.

4. RSS feeds integration
Nice alternative if you are looking for something to replace twitterfeed.com. Your company’s blog feed or news feed can be set to a specific update frequency. If HootSuite finds more than one post to send, you can tell them how many you’d like to push to Twitter each time. HootSuite could publish a maximum of 5 posts per cycle to multiple Twitter profiles.

5. Ow.ly
HootSuite’s branded URL shortener. It’s a great and convenient tool for users to keep track of the clicks from their posts. No separate signup required, no API needed, and you don’t have to leave HootSuite to do it. Plus you can post pictures and share files from your computer, Ow.ly.com is the hosting platform for all.

6. Embedded tracking
As long as you use Ow.ly as the shortener, HootSuite tracks all the clicks and delivers useful charts to analyze your performance.

The summary stat will show you:

• Total clicks (for the past 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or from within a certain date range)
• Daily clicks
• Clicks by region (overall)
• Top referrers (overall)
• Most popular tweets

The individual stat will show you:

• The total clicks on an individual ow.ly link you tweeted out

7. drag-n-drop tabs/columns
HootSuite has the most customizable, user-friendly interface I’ve seen so far. You create tabs, then add your twitter mention, direct message, search feed, pending feed and so on as columns. You can edit the tabs and columns to change their title and refresh rate (every 5 min, 10 min, etc). In addition, you can re-order their positions by drag-n-drop. For those organizations that intend to display a Twitter search feed on the .com website, HootSuite even gives you the codes for it. Click the [< >] embed button at the top of the search column. You can change the title of the embeddable column and modify its height/width. Once you’ve set it up, click “Grab Code” to generate the HTML for the embeddable column.

8. Twitter lists management
About half a year ago, Twitter debuted the “list” feature to boost their user adoption and potentially tighten the social graph on Twitter. HootSuite has now integrated their “group” feature with Twitter Lists – users can import existing lists from the Twitter.com; set the List as Private to have it behave like a Group; or create a public list by dragging and dropping Twitter avatars to the new column. It is much easier than managing lists on Twitter.com, take my words for it.

9. Hootlet
It is the secret weapon that got me addicted to HootSuite at the first place. Hootlet is basically a bookmark plug-in you can drag to your browser toolbar, but in 2 seconds, it will change the way you update all the social media profiles. Want to share a link? Hit the Hootlet button, and automatically, the URL is shortened and text is grabbed from the site.

10. Last but not the least, HootSuite is an ultra lightweight web application. Once you sign up an account, you can start manage tweets anywhere on any machine on any web browser. The ultimate portability means more efficiency for your business, less time worrying about installation & MAC/PC comparability.

In conclusion, I urge you to give HootSuite a try! It’s not perfect, but it has helped my clients to manage their social media profiles more efficiently! What tools have you used lately? What additional criteria are you looking for?

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